beeen a whileTools? Or Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Programming today is becoming more robust, more object-oriented, and driven towards user-friendliness. Companies like Microsoft are striving towards making programming nothing more than a few clicks here and there and self-generated code will appear. Is this really good for our society?
In a way, yes. The .NET series of programming, developed by Microsoft includes languages such as VB.NET, C++.NET, and Java.NET. Microsoft seems to be geared towards including more objects that are built-in to the languages to allow faster development and consistency. This approach can help thousands, if not millions of software developers to work effiently and at a mucher faster pace to produce software on demand. Not to mention website builders such as FrontPage and DreamWeaver were created to make website design not much more than a few clicks and pecks at the keyboard.
However, what is the downside to all of this? I have a strong voice when it comes to the negativities that such products induce. See as we developers grasp such technologies, all of the work is being done for us. When work is done for us we become lazy and forget our standard practices. For example, the calculator is one of the most wide-used tools for mathematics throughout the world. Of course the calculator has many benefits and saves us a great amount of time, people today are slow at self-calculating and some people can't even do any math without a calculator at hand! Dependency is an issue. The more people depend on machines or tools to accomplish something the more power to the creators! I have a firm belief in the "do it yourself" approach as you learn the fundamentals which can prove useful in everyday life.
I read a poster that stated programming is a battle between programmers and the universe. Everyday programmers are trying to create more idiot-proof software while the universe is creating more idiots. Not to mention the last sentence of this poster exclaimed "..and the universe is winning."
You can see for yourself that people are becoming more lazy, wanting everything to do the work for them. So what should you do to avoid this? Start with the fundamentals, build on them, and learn your topic. Tools are used to AID you in your work - not do the work for you.
Some suggestions to those who are programmers:- Instead of using an HTML Editor, try using strictly notepad.
- Try learning standard C++ or JAVA opposed to .NET
- Rather than downloading scripts for your website, write your own or modify the source of the scripts you've downloaded (if allowed).
Written by Daniel Moxon